Lucknow, 28th December, 1853.

My Dear Mr. Colvin,

I was glad to see your handwriting again, and to find that time had
made so little alteration in it. Oude affairs are, as you suppose,
much as they used to be, save that the King is now persuaded by his
minister and favourite that, had his predecessors had men and women
about them so wise as they are, they never would have acted as if
they believed that the Government of India ever really intended to
carry into effect the penalty of misgovernment, so often threatened.
Our Government has cried "wolf" so often that no one now listens to
it. The King is an utter imbecile, from over-indulgences of all
kinds; and the knaves whom he employs in his administration contrive
to persuade him that the preservation of his life and throne depends
entirely upon their vigilance and his doing nothing. Had I come here
when the treasury was full, and Naseer-od Doon Hyder was anxious to
spend his money in the manner best calculated to do good and please
our Government, I might have covered Oude with useful public works,
and much do I regret that I came here to throw away some of the best
years of my life among such a set of knaves and fools as I have to
deal with.

I think you will do much good in your present charge in the subject
to which you refer. In the matter of discourtesy to the native
gentry, I can only say that Robert Martin Bird insulted them whenever
he had the opportunity of doing so; and that Mr. Thomason was too apt
to imitate him in this as in other things. Of course their example
was followed by too many of their followers and admirers; but, like
you, I have been delighted to see a great many of the elder members
of the civil service, in spite of these bad examples, treat the
native gentry with all possible courtesy, and show them that they had
their sympathy as long as they deserved it by their conduct.

It has always struck me that Mr. Thomason, in his system, did all he
could to discourage the growth of a middle and upper class upon the
land--the only kind of property on which a good upper and middle
class could be sustained in the present state of society in India.
His village republics and the Ryutwar system of Sir Thomas Munro had
precisely the same tendency to subdivide minutely property in land,
and reduce all landholders to the common level of impoverishment. The
only difference was that the impoverished tenants in th